JATO: hybrids and cheap Dacia Sandero held up Europe’s EV offensive

The year 2024 wasn’t the best for the European car market, with a slowdown in growth that the industry began to see signs of in 2022, resulting in only a 0.9% growth, where this still was 28% in 2023.

New detailed figures from JATO Dynamics show a clear trend toward ‘cheaper’ hybrids driven by Toyota’s aggressive campaigning and a decline in BEV market share, from 15.7% in 2023 to 15.4% last year. The Dacia Sandero, a car starting at under 13,000 euros, dethroning the Tesla Y (-17%) as Europe’s best-selling car, is another sign by the man in the street.

Belgium showing opposite

But fully electric cars are not losing ground everywhere. Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands were the five European countries where BEVs gained the most market share year on year, while the opposite occurred in Germany, Ireland, Finland, Romania, and Sweden, JATO underlines.

In 2024, 12,909,741 new passenger cars were registered in Europe, including the UK, next to the EU27. Europe has some ‘long-Covid’ symptoms, as its car market has shrunk by almost 2.9 million units since the arrival of the pandemic in 2020.

“You would expect any other industry to have shown significant signs of recovery by now, and there is very little evidence that the automotive industry will return to the pre-pandemic reality, ” comments Felipe Munoz, Global Analyst at JATO Dynamics.

“The higher cost of vehicles, the rise of working from home, inflationary pressure on wages, and the emergence of new transportation solutions are among the reasons why Europeans stopped buying new cars,” Munoz continued.

Situation to improve

However, it’s not all trouble and affliction JATO is seeing. “Despite the drop recorded last year, the situation is expected to improve over 2025 as the average price of a BEV continues to fall in Europe, largely due to the introduction of less expensive models from mainstream automakers.”

So what did European car buyers seek foremost in 2024? Cheaper cars like the Dacia Sandero were the best-selling cars, with 268,101 units. That car retails in a country like Belgium starting at €12,890 lately on the Brussels Motor Show, with less Spartan versions ranging from 15.690 tot 17.190 euros.

That’s a 100% ICE car with a 1-liter engine on gasoline, dethroning the fully electric Tesla Y that headed the rankings in 2023 and now loses 17% to 209,214 units. In 2022, the Peugeot 208 gained the crown. It shows that the private market still isn’t ripe for electric, as the higher purchase price strengthens the man on the street’s prejudices that EVs are expensive.

The fleet market – in a country like Belgium, good for more than 60% of new car registrations yearly – inclines towards EVs based on tax benefits and a more realistic assessment of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), proving to be equal or even better than for ICE siblings.

When looking at the JATO map of the uptake of EVs in Europe today, large differences are seen between Europe’s North and West countries compared to the East and South.

While Norway has a BEV market share of 88%, followed by Denmark (51%), the Netherlands and Sweden (35%), and Belgium and Luxembourg (28%), the lowest uptake of electric cars is seen in Italy (4.2%), Spain (5.7%), or Greece (6.4%). Not to mention Eastern Europe, with 13 countries only reaching an average of 4.8% together, a clear sign of the differences.

Tempted by the word ‘electric’

The average private car buyer still shows a profound distrust of fully electric cars, but on the other hand, is tempted by the word ‘electric,’ often encouraged by marketing campaigns of carmakers like Toyota, selling the dummy that ‘hybrids’ offer electromobility too. It’s like promising you’ll drive fully electric in the city, too, which is at least a huge overstatement.

JAYO says the segment of fully hybrid models recorded 21% year-on-year growth between 2023 and 2024, and all carmakers that offered them posted growth last year. Toyota, known for its reluctance against fully electric BEVs under Chairman Shoichiro Toyoda, who died last year at the age of 97, and eagerly pushing the hybrid tech it pioneered 15 years ago, is, by no coincidence, the best example.

Out of a total market of 1,529,806 units registered in 2024, Toyota accounted for 738,500 units. Almost one in two hybrid vehicles registered in Europe in 2024 had a Toyota or Lexus logo, and 75% of registrations of Toyota passenger cars were hybrid vehicles.

When looking at its BEV sales, Toyota is nowhere in the top 20 in the JATO figures, while the brand is Europe’s second most popular (916,522 cars) after Volkswagen (1,354964) and before BMW (770,249), Skoda (757,000) and Mercedes (709,721).

In PHEV, Toyota shows up with the RAV4 and C-HR SUVs. However, plug-in hybrids account only for 7.3% of all car sales in 2024 in Europe, while classic hybrid (HEV) scores 11.8%, and BEVs 15.4%. Diesel loses terrain to 14.3%, and pure gasoline cars dive with 48.4% under the half-marker.

SUVs above all

Last but not least, another trend shows that most people don’t lie awake all night with concern about their car’s impact on climate change, as bulky SUVs remain by far the most popular, despite their reputation for higher fuel consumption.

Of the 12 million cars sold in 2024, 6.92 million were SUVs, with the bulk in the C-SUV compact segment (22.6% or +4.8%), and the smaller B-SUV city car segment (19.1% or +5.0%) and 4% in the luxury D-SUV segment.

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